The last words my Grandpa spoke to me

When I was growing up, my Grandma and Grandpa from my Dad’s side lived in Tennessee. They were warm and sweet. They had those Southern accents that sound like love and make you feel right at home. I flew from California to visit their small town with its small church and nothing much else a few summers. My Grandma would take me to VBS, and give me lots of hugs. I think I felt like everything could be okay in the world during those times. In the center of one of my Grandma’s hugs might be the safest and most loved I ever felt growing up. When I was staying with them, I could just be a kid.

My Grandpa I remember with a big, handsome smile on his face. He laughed often when I was around and didn’t take himself too seriously. I felt loved by him even though I didn’t see him often. As I grew up, I became more distant from them. They lived far away and I didn’t reach out or try to close the gap. I was consumed by the life and things and people in front of me, and didn’t think to love my grandparents.

Shortly after college, I heard that my Grandma had died. I cried and remembered her warm hugs.

Then, in 2021, after much suffering and loss of the life and things and people in front of me, I remembered my Grandpa. I felt this strong sense that I should reach out to him. I remembered his kindness towards me and wanted to reconnect. But it had been a very long time, and I didn’t know where he lived anymore or how to contact him. So, I reached out to my Aunt to find out. She told me that he was in the hospital and gave me his cell phone number.

When I called and heard his voice for the first time in over a decade, all the warmth and love of those summer days in Tennessee came rushing back. His voice was the same as I remembered, only feebler. Shakier. He didn’t know who I was at first, but when he realized, I could hear the joy and surprise in his voice. He asked me about my life and how I was. He told me he was in the hospital for a heart issue and that things weren’t looking great. He said he might be able to go home soon. I realized that the home he was referring to wasn’t the place I remembered and that my Grandma wouldn’t be there. Our brief call brimmed with joy and grief.

We spoke a few more times over the following weeks. He would forget what we’d talked about, maybe that we’d spoken at all. His health was deteriorating. During our last conversation, he said something to me that I’ve held on to ever since. His heart was failing. He knew the end was near. He said:

“Don’t wait like me.”

"Make sure you go to the doctor. Don’t wait like me, until it’s too late.”

I told him I wouldn’t, we said our goodbyes, and ended our call.

My Grandpa left this earth days later.

The last words he spoke to me had been a warning, like a plea.

A plea because he loved me, and didn’t want me to make the same mistakes he had, or to die the way he was.

I believe he was talking about my physical heart, my physical health. He wanted me to be preventative. To not neglect annual physicals and the like. But looking back, knowing what I know now - who I know now - I can’t help but wonder. The same man whose wife had taken me to VBS and other church functions all those years ago told me not to wait. “Go to the doctor.”

His comments put a healthy fear in me. I’d promised I wouldn’t wait and I meant it. I didn’t want to die of some unknown or undealt-with disease.

Not long after my Grandpa passed, I became pregnant. I’d had sex with someone against my conscience.

Full of fear and regret and self-condemnation, I chose to quiet and ignore my conscience one more time and have an abortion. I closed my eyes so as not to see the graphic signs held by pro-life advocates while driving up to the clinic. I opted out of looking at the ultrasound. I knew that what I was doing was wrong, but I hardened my heart. I was too afraid to do anything else.

Shortly after, about a week later, a friend who knew about the abortion asked me how I was doing. I compared what I felt to finding a dead seal on the beach - it was sad, but c’est la vie. I was too afraid to actually grieve.

I recall, in that moment, being disturbed by my own callousness. Who have I become? My conscience was, once again, pricked. This is wrong.

The symptoms of a ‘sickness’ were becoming more obvious. My need for a doctor, for someone to tell me and heal whatever was clearly wrong with me, was becoming more obvious. I’d sought help in 12-step recovery. In therapy. In New Age teachers and gurus. In self-help and spiritual disciplines. But here I was - my heart more cold and calloused than ever. I was more deeply ashamed and afraid than ever. You might say my ‘heart’ was being examined and revealed to me by the Holy Spirit. The divine Doctor, in His mercy, comes to us before we ever come to Him.

Indeed, that same month, I had an unexpected encounter with Jesus. Despite all appearances to the world, I felt ugly, ashamed, afraid, and alone. Crying alone on the floor in my bedroom is where He met me and showed me grace. I was captivated by His kindness. Perhaps He might be able to show me the way to heal. I opened up a Precious Moments Bible that’d been given to me by my Nana (a different Grandma) when I was born. I decided to attend church, one a friend had brought me to a few years before. And as I sought Jesus, He showed me the truth.

He showed me that all of us are born with the same, inherited ‘heart’ condition. When my Grandpa implored me to be preventative, to have myself examined, my ‘heart’ was already very sick. In fact, I’d been born with the same soul-deep sickness as him: sin. I didn’t trust God to love me, help me, or heal me. I learned that we’re all born with this ‘heart’ defect since Adam, and that we make ourselves more sick when we walk in sin and refuse to trust God. I learned that I’d been making myself sicker and sicker as I went my own way, rather than God’s way. My condition was progressive and terminal if left untreated. Sin had made my heart hardened and calloused, like stone.

I also learned that there was a cure, and one (only one) Doctor who could truly put a stop to and heal the damaged caused by my sin. He’d been the last one I’d wanted or been willing to turn to - Jesus. I’d turned to everything for a ‘cure’ except Him. But out of His great love for me, He had continued to reach out and extend His help and hand to me.

So, He offered me this cure. He offered me a new heart, and a new way. It brought me to my knees. He offered me His own healthy, beautiful, sinless heart in exchange for my sick, disfigured, sinful heart. He offered me His eternal life, in exchange for my condemned life. His reward, for my punishment. And He made it very clear that there was no other way. He had to die, so I could live.

Against every impulse, I accepted that the one who I’d hated and rejected and despised all those years, was willing to die for me. And when He died, I - my pride, my distrust, my sin - died with Him.

I was born again. I received a new heart, His heart - and a new life, His life.

And the best part? Jesus, my Doctor, my Savior, didn’t stay in the grave. He rose from it, in glory and beauty and yes, body! What He’d sacrificed out of love for me became mine and remained His at the same time. I was freed from my death sentence, my terminal illness, and He was free from death, who could not hold Him. And it would not hold me.

A year or so after my Grandpa left me with his final, heartfelt plea, I was baptized in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. I had “gone to the doctor” (who had really come to me first - in my Grandpa’s words even) and accepted help for my sick heart. I still “go to the doctor” now, every day actually. I’m that sick, and I’ve come to love Him. My healing is, indescribably, both complete and ongoing.

And what about you? How is your heart? Have you gone to the doctor?

Just like my Grandpa warning and imploring me in love not to wait, so I implore you. Don’t wait until you’re more sick. Rest assured that, if left untreated, the symptoms of this inherited sickness become more disturbing - the heart more cold and calloused, the soul more ashamed and afraid. “Don’t wait like me.” We don’t have to live like that.

I certainly don’t want you to wait until it’s too late. Today is the day of salvation. Today, you can be healed and begin healing. Jesus invites you to come, to call on Him just as you call on a Doctor when you know you’re sick, and be saved. He is reaching out to you now in these very words. Return His call. He will heal you with His love.

You might say the prayer spoken by the humble in Luke’s Gospel:

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.

Or the prayer of David out of Psalm 139:

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
    test me and know my anxious thoughts.
Point out anything in me that offends you,
    and lead me along the path of everlasting life.

The words are not so important - each of us cries out in our own voice. The Heart Doctor hears our humble cries for healing. I cried out, and He healed me and He will heal you too. There is new life for you.

It is not an easy life, I won’t sugarcoat it to you. Living with this new heart is very difficult. It loves what God loves and hates what He hates, yet is housed for now in an old body (yet to be redeemed) that often hates what God loves and loves what He hates. Nevertheless, He is faithful. Sin, shame, death, and the fear of it, have lost their power. He is making all things new. His work is irreversible and eternal. It is the gift of life.

No matter how bad it’s gotten, no matter how far we’ve fallen, no matter how ashamed, ugly, or broken we are - if we simply come, simply call, His answer is “Yes.” God so loved us, He gave us Jesus - whoever believes and trusts in Him, will not perish, but have eternal life.

I’m grateful for my Grandpa’s final plea, his final gift to me, and I’m grateful to God through Jesus Christ for healing and setting me free.